About Me

Saturday, November 5, 2011

like most mortals, at seven and eight i started creating categories, putting cats into this one, socks into another, girls into several. i couldn't help myself. the world overwhelmed me with too much information. for example, ten billion stimuli hit our eyes every second. of those we can actively recognize forty and deal with four at most. we create a life day by day, editing out what we fear or doesn't seem useful.

lately i've spent time with two friends devoured by conspiracy theories. these occupy their minds to organize the world. as usual, nefarious political and financial people conspire to get everything, to steal from us, to make us suffer. unfortunately, it's true, though the upper one percent would never agree. 'we're creating job opportunities.'

yet, what's really happening in the minds of my friends? the making sense of the world by adopting a system which keeps their busy minds occupied. and when i watch people pouring over the bible in cafes, i think the same, 'they've reduced life to this particular, very comprehensive and confusing book from which you can justify anything.' luckily, it evades science, economics, anything which might prove even more difficult to assimilate. again, frantic intelligences being absorbed in a complete universe.

any paradigm can be proven true. that's the beauty of it. all you have to do is accept a few basic premises without proof and the rest follows! this, you have to admit, completely ingenious. what it eliminates is doubt, ambiguity, and the hell of independent thought. and, of course, i would like to suggest an alternate route.

CANDLE

Surely you weren't meant to be born here in thiskitchen, waiting forthe ants. Old Greek poets sang of dresses fallingfrom lovely limbs, the moonbouncing off the water.Sanskrit sages deniedanyone could resist the flute of Krishna, tunesfluttering through the perfumedleaves. Married women dropped wedding rings, shyness, customs, the husband's heavy sighs, to slide out the doorinto the forest. And ifyou find yourself doing the same, open the poemsof Bhartrihari and drinkthe deep silence of the stars, burn like the candleyou left far behindwatching in the window.